A Historic Confrontation between Jean Rouch and Ousmane
Sembène in 1965: "You Look at Us as if We Were Insects"
This 1965 conversation is between two great cinematographers - one Senegalese, the other French –
whose primary film subject is Africa. At the time of the talk, the Frenchman Jean Rouch (1917-2004)
was at the forefront of European filmmaking. Acclaimed as an ethnographic director, Rouch was first
to use the term cinéma vérité, applying it to Chronicle of a Summer (1960), his best known film.
Literally meaning "cinema truth,” cinéma vérité is a genre that blurs fact and fiction and an influential
film movement of the nineteen fifties and ‘sixties. Rouch’s lifelong attachment to African subjects
began in 1941. His West African documentaries, such as Les Hommes Qui Font La Pluie (Men Who
Make the Rain, 1951), Les Maîtres Fous (Masters of Madness, 1955), and La Pyramide Humaine (The
Human Pyramid, 1961) show his fascination with magic and ritual.
They also exemplify the
ethnographic gaze associated with a primitivism couched in the rationale of the archive and Western
science. “You look at us as if we were insects,” Ousmane Sembène objects in this conversation.
Senegalese film director, producer, and writer of first importance, Ousmane Sembène (b.1923) helped
define modern Africa for the post-colonial era. The prize-winning success of his film Borom Sarret at
the 1963 Tours International Festival in France, two years before this conversation took place, brought
African film to the world stage. The previous commentary by Nwachukwu Frank Ukadike considered
Sembène’s films in the context of revisionist cinematography by Black Africans and their aim to give
an authentic voice to modern Africa. In this “historic confrontation” between Sembène and Rouch the
question of authenticity – of who can represent Africa truly – is again emphatically underlined. What
are Rouch’s arguments in favor of the ethnographic viewpoint? How does Sembène counter? What is
the dilemma for the artist and audience? How would you resolve it?
Source: The Short Century: Independence and Liberation Movements in Africa 1945-1994, edited by
Okwui Enwezor, p.440. Munich, London, New York: Prestel, 2001. Transcribed by Albert Cervoni and
translated by Muna El Fituri.
Ousmane Sembène: Will European cinematographers, you for example, continue to
make films about Africa once there are a lot of African cinematographers?
Jean Rouch: This will depend on a lot of things but my point of view, for the
moment, is that I have an advantage and disadvantage at the same time. I bring
the eye of the stranger. The very notion of ethnology is based on the following
idea: someone confronted with a culture that is foreign to him sees certain things
that the people on the inside of this same culture do not see.
Ousmane Sembène: You say seeing. But in the domain of cinema, it is not enough
to see, one must analyze. I am interested in what is before and after that which we
see. What I do not like about ethnography, I'm sorry to say, is that it is not enough
to say that a man we see is walking; we must know where he comes from, where
he is going.
Jean Rouch: You are right on this point because we have not arrived at the goal of
our knowledge. I believe as well that in order to study French culture, ethnology
having to do with France must be practiced by people on the outside. If one wants
to study Auvergne or Lozere, one must be a Briton. My dream is that Africans will
be producing films on French culture. As a matter of fact, you have already started.
When Paulin Vieyra did Afrique sur Seine (Africa on the Seine) his purpose was
indeed to show African students, but he was showing them in Paris and he was
showing Paris. There could be a dialogue, and you could show us what we ourselves
are incapable of seeing. I am certain that the Paris or Marseilles of Ousmane
Sembène is not my Paris, my Marseilles, that they have nothing in common.
Ousmane Sembène: There's a
film of yours that I love, that
I've defended and will continue
to defend. It's Moi, un Noir. In
principle, an African could have
done it, but none of us at the
time
had
conditions
the
to
necessary
realize
it.
I
believe that there needs to be
a sequel to Moi, un Noir, to
1. Still from Moi, un Noir by Jean Rouch, 1958
continue—I think about it all
the
time—the
story
of
this
young man who, after Indochina, does not have a job and ends up in jail. After
Independence, what becomes of him? Has something changed for him? I don't
believe so. A detail: this young man had his diploma, now it so happens that most
delinquent youth have their school diplomas. Their education doesn’t help them,
doesn't allow them to manage normally. And, finally, I feel that up to now two films
of value have been made on Africa: your, Moi, un Noir and Come Back Africa, which
you do not like. And then there's a third one, of a particular order, I'm talking about
Les Statues Meurent Aussi (Statues Die Too).
Jean Rouch: I would like you to tell me why you don't like my purely ethnographic
films, those in which we show, for instance, traditional life?
Ousmane Sembène: Because you show, you fix a reality without seeing the
evolution. What I hold against you and the Africanists is that you look at us as if we
were insects.
Jean Rouch: As Fabre1 would have done. I will defend the Africanists. They are men
that can certainly be accused of looking at black men as if they were insects. But
there might be Fabres out there who, when examining ants, discover a similar
culture, one that is as meaningful as their own.
Ousmane Sembène: Ethnographic films have often done us a disservice.
Jean Rouch: That is true, but it's the fault of the authors, because we often work
poorly. It doesn't change the fact that in today's situation we can provide
testimonies. You know that there's a ritual culture in Africa that is disappearing:
griots die. One must gather the last living traces of this culture. I don't want to
compare Africanists with saints, but they are the unfortunate monks undertaking
the task of gathering fragments of a culture based on an oral tradition that is in the
process of disappearing, a culture that strikes me as having a fundamental
importance.
Ousmane Sembène: But ethnographers don't collect fables and legends only of the
griots. It is not solely about explaining African masks. Let's take, for example, the
case of another one of your films. Les Fils de I'Eau. I believe that a lot of European
viewers didn't understand it because, for them, these rites of initiation didn't have
any meaning. They found the film beautiful, but didn't learn anything.
Jean Rouch: While filming Les Fils de I'Eau, I thought that by seeing the film
European viewers could do just that, go beyond the old stereotype of blacks being
"savages." I simply showed that just because someone doesn't participate in a
written culture doesn't mean they do not think. There's also the case of Maitres
Fous, one of my films that provoked heated debates among African colleagues. For
me, it testifies to the spontaneous manner in which the Africans shown In the film,
once out of their milieu, get rid of this industrial and metropolitan European
ambiance by playing it, giving it as spectacle. I believe, however, that problems of
reception do come up. One day, I showed the film in Philadelphia at an anthropological congress. A lady came to see me and asked: "can I have a copy?" I asked
her why. She told me she was from the South and . . . . she wanted to show . . .
this film to prove that blacks were indeed savages! I refused. You see, I gave you
an argument.
In agreement with the producers, the showing of Maitres Fous has been reserved
for art houses and cinema clubs. I believe that one should not bring such films to
an audience that is too large, ill-informed, and without proper presentation and
explanation. I also believe that the unique ceremonies of the people in Maitres Fous
make a primordial contribution to world culture.
1
Jean Henri Fabre (1823-1915), famous for his study of the behavior and anatomy of insects.